…musings from a mama in med school

Menu

Monthly Archives: March 2015

We used to count to five on our hands to stop Ben from crying and calm him when he was a little baby… at the time we just did it because he seemed fascinated with watching our fingers and listening to the repetition. I guess it stuck with him…

We just had a revelation yesterday that we can’t remember the last time we noticed Benjamin sucking his thumb. When did that end? It is so strange that you could be so hyper-attuned to every possible detail of your child’s life, but still be completely oblivious to something like that just fading away… (Or did it stop cold turkey?). It’s possible that it was months ago that he stopped sucking his thumb, and we are just now coming to the realization. Weird…

Some old pictures with the thumb:

Seriously, we know every stinking detail… We could easily tell you that he didn’t have a poop today, so we’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure he has one tomorrow. We know the perfect techniques for doing a sneak attack to get a booger out of his nose. We know all his nuanced, constantly fluctuating preferences for daily routines (change the diaper standing up while playing (if it’s just wet), drink milk with Toby on the couch in the morning on the right side of the couch, name all of the people we love before bed, while being held standing up after stories). We have our teamwork down to a science for using gentle force to restrain him while we cut his toenails. We have developed a precisely tuned process for winding him down for bed (Cliff’s notes version: bed, sink, books). We know the moments during the daily routine that trigger meltdowns, down to the second. We chronicle daily, like over-zealous reporters, all his latest verbal milestones. (In the bath tonight, while holding out a toy motorboat: “Mama… how does work?”).

But for the life of us, we have NO IDEA when he stopped sucking his thumb!

This morning Benjamin decided that monkey and bear needed to come out of the crib at wakeup time and join us at the breakfast table. He proceeded to narrate the steps we needed to carry out to get things all set up… through his gestures and short phrases (monkey eat, get bowl, banana, etc.) we got everyone settled in with their food.

When I texted John the picture and the details, his response was, “He’s a total little person now with plans.”